Cruz campaign says it was assured Cambridge Analytica’s...

1of 3Cambridge Analytica did an estimated $5.8 million worth of business with U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign. Cruz’s political organization said Tuesday it was assured in 2015 that there was nothing illegal about the data provided to his presidential campaign.Photo: Ron Cortes /For the San Antonio Express-News

2of 3U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz’s political organization said Tuesday it was assured in 2015 that there was nothing illegal about the data provided to his presidential campaign by Cambridge Analytica.Photo: Ron Cortes /For the San Antonio Express-News

3of 3Cambridge Analytica did an estimated $5.8 million worth of business with U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign, starting from its launch in March 2015 until June 2016, a month after he dropped out of the Republican primaries.Photo: Ron Cortes /For the San Antonio Express-News

WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz’s political organization said Tuesday it was assured in 2015 that there was nothing illegal about the data his presidential campaign was being provided by Cambridge Analytica, a firm that has come under fire for improperly collecting personal information about millions of Facebook users without their consent.

Cruz is under attack from Texas Democrats as new questions about how the Cambridge, Massachusetts, firm siphoned data from Facebook, allegedly through an app misrepresented as “a research app used by psychologists.”

On Friday, Facebook announced it was suspending U.K.-based Strategic Communications Laboratories and its U.S. data subsidiary, Cambridge Analytica, alleging that they obtained data from a researcher who lied about the commercial uses of an app offered to Facebook users that provided access to information about them and their online friends.

Much of the furor surrounding the revelations has focused on Cambridge Analytica’s ties to the Trump campaign, but the firm also did an estimated $5.8 million worth of business with Cruz’s presidential campaign, starting from its launch in March 2015 until June 2016, a month after he dropped out of the Republican primaries.

Questions about Cambridge Analytica’s methods were first raised in the British media in December 2015. Cruz spokeswoman Catherine Frazier said campaign officials reached out to the firm as soon as they were contacted by reporters. She said the campaign accepted the firm’s representations that everything was above board.

“The campaign relied upon those representations throughout our engagement, which were reiterated by Cambridge Analytica upon inquiries of the media back in 2015, when they assured us the claims made in the press were false,” Frazier said.

The campaign hired Cambridge Analytica as a vendor to assist with data analysis and online advertising. The campaign’s data analysis program followed and built upon the successful data-modeling and microtargeting approach pioneered by the Obama campaigns in 2008 and 2012.

In a presentation to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) last year, Cruz data guru Chris Wilson described the campaign’s sophisticated data modeling system for profiling voters. “There’s nothing we’ve talked about here that wasn’t done by the Clinton campaign and the Obama campaign,” he said. “We just took it a step further.”

Frazier said Tuesday that the campaign’s contract language with Cambridge Analytica “affirmatively represented that all data used by them were obtained legally, that they would conduct their operations ‘in accordance with all applicable laws and regulations,’ and that they ‘hold all necessary permits, licenses and consents to conduct its operations.’”

Facebook’s break with Cambridge Analytica, however, has raised questions about both companies’ roles in using personal information about tens of millions of unwitting users in a burgeoning global market for consumer and political data.

Cruz’s ties to Cambridge Analytica — including part owner Robert Mercer, a wealthy Cruz donor — came under attack Monday from Texas Democratic Party Deputy Executive Director Manny Garcia. “Ted Cruz will stop at nothing to weasel his way into power even, even if it means weaponizing stolen information,” Garcia said. “Regardless of political party, this massive invasion of privacy should make every American sick to their stomach.”

Campaign finance records show that Cambridge Analytica was one of several data analytics firms Cruz used in his 2016 campaign. Sources close to the campaign said it made up only a small part of the campaign’s data operation.

The bulk of the campaign’s payments to the firm were for digital media buys, with much of the rest covering the cost of contracted data analysts.

Using data analysis firms such as Cambridge Analytica, combined with their own data work, the Cruz campaign was widely credited with running one of the most advanced data operations in the 2016 campaign. “Psychographic” models compiled from various lists and voter files allowed the campaign to microtarget digital ads by specific interests and regions and give field workers the tools to make individually tailored campaign pitches to potential activists and supporters based on political, religious and personality traits.

Although it is possible that information originally gleaned from Facebook could have been used in the voter profiles used by the Cruz campaign, the data would not have necessarily been identified as such.

Cambridge also provided online survey data to the campaign, although that would not have used the information gleaned from Facebook. Campaign officials say they did not take possession of any data from Cambridge Analytica.

At the same time that Cruz’s Houston-based campaign was working with the firm, the Trump campaign’s 2016 data analytics operation was being run largely out of San Antonio under the direction of local digital advertising executive Brad Parscale, who is now running Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign.

Along with Republican National Committee operatives dispatched to San Antonio, the Trump operation also employed staff from Cambridge Analytica.

Government officials are now looking into whether Facebook’s role in the data collection violated a 2011 consent decree with the Federal Trade Commission designed to protect users’ privacy.

Facebook has denied it violated the deal.

“Protecting people’s information is at the heart of everything we do, and we require the same from people who operate apps on Facebook,” the company said in a statement.

Facebook says it was approached in 2015 by Dr. Aleksandr Kogan, a Cambridge University psychology professor, seeking to use the social media site as a platform for people to download his app, “thisisyourdigitallife.” It was billed as a research app for academic purposes and would offer users personality predictions.

According to Facebook, about 270,000 people downloaded the app, giving Kogan access to some of their profile information, content they had “liked,” as well as more limited information about Facebook friends who had their settings set to allow it — thus multiplying the app’s reach exponentially.

Facebook has emphasized that there was no data breach or hack. Users volunteered their information when they downloaded the app.

The problem, according to Facebook, is that Kogan then passed the information on to third parties such as Cambridge Analytica, which was using it for political purposes — a violation of the company’s policies.

Facebook officials say they removed Kogan’s app in 2015 when they first learned of the violation. They said they demanded “certifications” from Kogan and all parties with whom he had shared data that the information would be destroyed.

In the last week, however, the company says “we received reports that contrary to the certifications we were given, not all data was deleted.” Those claims are now being investigated internally, and possibly by Congress as well.

Calls for a congressional investigation have focused on Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg and the company’s relationship with outside developers who are given access to Facebook’s data. Critics complain that Facebook users are vulnerable to a variety of web designers who persuade them to download their apps or sign onto their web pages using the “log-in through Facebook” feature.

“They say ‘trust us,’ but Mark Zuckerberg needs to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee about what Facebook knew about misusing data from 50 million Americans in order to target political advertising and manipulate voters,” Minnesota Democrat Amy Klobuchar said in a statement.

Also sitting on the Senate Judiciary Committee is Cruz, whose Senate re-election campaign is ramping up for the 2018 midterm elections.